Decorating houses, offices, and other areas, both interior and exterior, has taken place for a number of years. A major part of decorating is choosing the layout of an area, determining how items are arranged, and selecting appropriate colors for the boundaries and the various items located inside the boundaries for the areas to be decorated. When a room is decorated, several colors may be chosen. One or more colors may be chosen for the walls, ceilings, floors, and doors of the room, another color may be chosen for the furniture to be placed in the room, and other colors may be selected for various decorative accessories, such as vases, curtains, paintings, and the like. In addition, decorators may also select a color for trim work, such as baseboards, crown moulding, chair moulding, interior doors, corbels, onlays, switch plates, window trimmings, ceiling medallions, appliqués, corner and plinth blocks and the like.
Selecting colors may be a difficult task depending on the type of material. In fact, the type of material may dictate what substance or finish is used to apply color. Often, individuals deal with choosing and selecting of paint and/or stain colors when decorating items, such as bedrooms, bathrooms, offices, schools, hospitals, and the like. When it comes to decorating, choosing colors can really be a challenge. While an individual may feel that there are so many choices, the individual is bound to find the right color; thus, one may end up feeling that there are so many choices, but where does one start. It is great for individuals/decorators to collect paint chips and/or stain samples when planning a color scheme for a room, but final decisions are often not made until an overall room scheme is developed. While paint, stain, and other coloring substances are often available in literally an infinite array of colors, difficulty often arises when an individual has to match a color to an item that has various factors that alter the color after it is applied to the item. For example, choosing a color for wood is difficult as individuals fail to take into account the type of wood and the affect that the wood grain has on the color. For example, when an individual selects a stain color for wood based items, such as doors, cabinets, office furniture, office cubicles, and the like, the final color does not always match the originally selected color as the type of wood and wood grain can affect the final appearance of the wood item.
The components of paint may also present a problem when selecting colors. Paint is a substance consisting of two things, pigment and binder. Pigment is what gives color to paint and in its raw form it is a fine powder. Binder is what holds the pigment and adheres it to a surface. The pigment particles are insoluble and merely form a suspension in the binder. Paint may be appropriate for a variety of walls, such as sheetrock, plaster, cinder block, concrete and the like while a different substance or finish, such as an oil or water-based stain, is appropriate for items made of wood. Stain is a type of paint that is very thin, that is, low in viscosity, and formulated so that the pigment penetrates the surface rather than remaining in a film on top of the surface. Stain is predominantly pigment or dye and solvent with little binder, designed primarily to add color without providing a surface coating. An individual must also take into account the differences between paint and stain when choosing a color and deciding to use either paint or stain.
Difficulty in selecting colors also arises when an individual selects an item, such as a door or piece of furniture, and a color for the item from a catalogue or web site without actually seeing the item in the selected color in person. Often the individual that selected the item from the catalogue or website is disappointed with the actual appearance of the item as the item's color and final appearance often does not appear to be what the individual had in mind.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a system and method that allows individuals to select a color for a wood based item and can provide the individual with an image of the wood based item after the selected color has been applied to the item whereby the system takes into account the type of wood and any affects that wood grain will have on the overall appearance of the item.